Chapter 15

Wuming’s face went dark at once. “Courting death.” But as he watched the direction Shen Qing ran, his expression smoothed back to calm.
The moment she finished cursing, Shen Qing shoved a door open and bolted back into the forests of Mount Li. The farther she was from Springview Terrace, the safer Zhao Ranyan would be.
The commander of the imperial guard had worked quickly; there was no sign of any other living soul within the mountain now. Everyone else had likely been escorted down to Chang’an.
All the better.
The damp in the woods grew thicker and heavier as Shen Qing ran toward where Gu Yun and Li Daoxuan had gone. Wuming never once appeared to stop her from heading that way.
Quietly, she asked the system in her heart, “001, is Li Daoxuan dead yet?”
001’s cold, mechanical voice replied, “System scan shows the capture mission is still in progress. Target remains alive.”
The heart she’d been holding in her throat finally settled. As long as he wasn’t dead, it was fine.
Wuming was watching her from somewhere unseen; perhaps, in his eyes, Shen Qing was no more than an ant, one light pinch and she’d be crushed, so he did not bother to act personally. Instead, he watched with a hunter’s playful interest as she struggled inside the net he’d cast over the world.
Shen Qing took full advantage of that mindset. Keeping her mind steady, she continued moving toward Li Daoxuan’s position.
Suddenly, she stepped on something and the world lurched. The trees ahead began to shift, layer after layer of trunks circling around her as the center, moving in staggered, intricate patterns. Just one glance forward was enough to make her dizzy.
Stay in such a formation too long, and a person’s soul would be spun right out of their body by these trees.
This was no joke.
It was literally that one of the three souls in a person’s three souls and seven spirits could be drawn away by the grove.
Wuming clearly knew Mount Li inside and out and was extremely skilled in formations. What she stood in now was a formation laid with the mountain as its base and the woods as its body.
Shen Qing stopped in place and carefully searched the ground. At last, she found a stone. The locust trees around her were spinning ever faster, even leaving afterimages.
Fighting the dizziness, she carefully studied the pattern. When she finally grasped the key, she wrapped the stone in a talisman and hurled it forward. It struck a particularly slender locust tree.
The tree that looked so solid split clean in half and vanished in a wisp of illusion.
With the array eye broken, the spinning forest stilled, restoring itself to normal.
Wuming’s surprised voice drifted over. “I didn’t expect you to be quite this capable.” A low laugh followed. “But don’t be too pleased with yourself. Try taking one more step.”
At his words, Shen Qing moved forward, and the ground beneath the locust trees suddenly sprouted thick vines. They slithered like serpents, weaving together as they crawled toward her feet.
The sight tugged at an old memory: ten years ago, the ancient evil spirits nine-headed Xiangyou had trapped an entire city and laid an Eight Palaces Killing Formation within.
Only those who broke the formation could leave the city.
That array had been endlessly shifting, every formation nested inside another, a formation within formations.
Even throwing nearly all of Xuanji Pavilion’s and East Mountain Temple’s knowledge at it, they couldn’t find the way to break it. They could only circle in frustration outside the city walls. The people inside were fragile mortals, utterly ignorant of mystic arts. Within the Eight Palaces Killing Formation, danger lurked at every step; the slightest misstep could cost them their lives.
The townsfolk of that city were trapped for more than three months. With no food or supplies able to pass through, their minds grew hollow. Their grain was gone, arrows spent; hallucinations came first, then cannibalism.
Only when Qian Zimo finally severed one of Xiangyou’s heads and gravely wounded him into flight did the formation collapse. By then, only a little over a hundred people had survived within the city. The casualties had been catastrophic.
That was why the Emperor himself had issued an edict to mark nine-headed Xiangyou as a primary target for extermination. Yet ten years passed as if the evil spirits had never existed, leaving not a trace, until today, when Shen Qing’s blood had drawn him out again.
What she stood in now was also a formation within a formation. Outside the locust grove array, an even greater array waited for her.
Seeing Shen Qing freeze in place, seemingly at a loss, Wuming’s taunting voice rolled from all directions above. “You may know a thing or two about formations, but as it happens, I’m fond of them as well. What you’re standing in now is a new array I’ve been tinkering with in my spare time.
Your lover boy is trapped in it too. Let’s say this, if the two of you work together to break my formation, I’ll let one of you go free.
On the other hand, if you get tangled up by these locust trees and can’t take another step, then you’ll obediently become my companion and let me drink my fill of your blood.”
Shen Qing, of course, had no other choice. Watching the vines creep toward her, she answered at once, “All right, it’s a deal.” As if.
She knew every word that snake spat was nonsense. For all she knew, he’d never planned to let her go in the first place. Once she broke the array and dragged Li Daoxuan out, she fully intended to have Li Daoxuan beat this damned snake into a puddle of paste.
If she was right, Wuming’s wounds still weren’t fully healed, and he might not even be able to beat Li Daoxuan.
Given how he’d once thrown the mortal world into chaos ten years ago, if he’d truly recovered, he wouldn’t be hiding his presence like this today. He’d have already stormed back in force and swallowed everyone on Mount Li in one gulp.
If he really could have killed Li Daoxuan, he would have done it already, not trapped the boy in some formation to delay things.
Perhaps Wuming was wary of Xuanji Pavilion and East Mountain Temple as well.
All the better. If he wanted to play, she’d play with him. When it came to formations, she wasn’t convinced she was any worse than he was.
Ignoring the vines creeping toward her, Shen Qing walked straight into the locust grove.
The vines were close now, but when she took a firm step down, it was like treading empty ground. Without so much as a glance down, she walked on; the dense tangle of vines passed right through her feet as if they were phantoms, streaming past toward the space behind her.
They were illusions. This trial was nothing more than a test of one’s composure and state of mind.
If she had lashed out at them in panic, the vines would have surged, becoming real and multiplying, binding her fast in the woods.
So long as she didn’t strike first, she’d be fine.
The formations in Mount Li were likely things Wuming had crafted in his boredom, and perhaps he was quite proud of them, but to Shen Qing’s eyes, they were full of holes.
Elsewhere in the forest, Li Daoxuan, dressed in a crimson robe embroidered with golden cloud-born branches, bent down to pick up the silver elbow guard he’d removed earlier. He buckled it back onto his wrist, the metal once more drawing his wide sleeve snug, restoring his clean, crisp silhouette.
He hadn’t gone far when several man-tall water mirrors suddenly dropped from the sky, closing in around him.
A playful, bell-clear feminine laugh chimed at his ear. “Little lord has walked so long, are you not tired? Why not come rest in this slave’s arms?”
Ripples spread across the mirror surfaces, and a number of enchanting women stepped barefoot out from within. They wore silk so thin it barely covered their bodies, gauzy layers clinging to curves that were just right, every line sensual and inviting.
They tittered sweetly, fluttering handkerchiefs as they pressed toward him, their lips spilling indecent whispers not fit for polite ears.
Li Daoxuan looked at them as if they were piles of bleached bone. “A few ugly mirror evil spirits,” he said coldly. “You should at least look in a mirror before deciding whether you’re worthy.”
At that, the women pouted, displeased. “Little lord’s tongue is so sharp, those words make this slave most unhappy.”
They reached toward his shoulders,
Li Daoxuan drew his sword at once in a sweeping strike. The women shrieked and scattered back, then spoke in chorus, “Little lord, you are truly hard-hearted and cold. Absolutely heartless!”
These “joy mirrors” had been trailing him the whole way, but from start to finish, Li Daoxuan had only two words for them:
“Get lost.”
“Little lord is so cold” they cooed. Then, with a flick of their slender hands, they tugged at their own shoulders, and that smooth, thin silk slipped down like water, pooling on the ground.
In the blink of an eye, bare limbs and gleaming skin were on full display, spring light scattered everywhere.
“Let’s hope… it’s only your mouth that’s hard, and not your heart”
Li Daoxuan reacted swiftly. Before those women could strip, he had already sliced off a corner of his robe with his sword, folded it a few times, and tied it over his eyes.
The world around him went dark, but in exchange, his hearing and sense of touch sharpened even more than before.
A breath of cool air brushed past his ear. A woman’s tinkling laugh sounded to one side, and Li Daoxuan thrust his sword in that direction without hesitation.
“Ah!”
Cold steel sank cleanly into flesh. The woman screamed, clutching her wound as she crashed to the ground. Behind Li Daoxuan, one of the water mirrors shattered with a sharp crack, leaving a gap in the ring.
The opening didn’t last long; the other mirrors shifted, sliding in to cover it again. The circle around him shrank that little bit more.
After killing one joy-mirror, Li Daoxuan seemed to take a heavy hit, he suddenly spat a mouthful of blood.
He didn’t so much as frown. Wiping the blood from the corner of his lips, he shouldered his wooden bow and quiver, gripped his sword, and walked on.
Joy-mirrors weren’t very lethal, but their allure was terrifyingly strong. They delighted in lust and seduction, using charm-arts to tempt men, magnifying the desire in their hearts so they could drain their essence and flesh.
There was another point as well: anyone trapped within a ring of joy-mirrors could not take the initiative to harm them, or they would be struck by backlash.
So very few people ever dared raise a hand against them; they usually relied on sheer willpower to outlast the mirrors.
Given enough time, if the chosen man never made a move, the joy-mirrors eventually grew bored and slipped away on their own.
None of them had ever imagined Li Daoxuan would casually cut one of their sisters down. They all froze, stunned.
That single strike weighed on them like a boulder dropped into their hearts. Facing a man so utterly unmoved by beauty and so reckless as to kill one of them despite the backlash, they understood at once: this was a little lunatic who wasn’t afraid of death.
For the sake of their own lives, the joy-mirrors darted back into their mirrors in a panic and turned into streaks of light, fleeing in all directions.
Even so, Li Daoxuan did not untie the cloth from his eyes. Where he now stood was a phantom realm: with every step he took, the scenery within shifted and changed, illusions and reality tangled together until there was no telling them apart. Anything his eyes saw was suspect.
He’d come from the west. The wind had been blowing toward the south.
The wind in the forest hadn’t changed. The direction he needed to go was south, so Li Daoxuan simply followed the wind, striding in that direction.
A few loose strands of hair clung to his cheek, tickling just enough to interfere with his focus. He raised a hand and swept them back behind his ear.
He had no idea how long he’d been walking when the breeze behind him suddenly weakened, as if something, or someone, had blocked it. Li Daoxuan tightened his lips, ready to swing his sword, but a clear, slightly trembling girl’s voice rang out:
“It’s me!”
His sword halted in midair.
Shen Qing let out a long breath. She’d just fought her way out of a minor array, picked up a few injuries on the way, and nearly died under his sword for her efforts.
Still, the good news was: she’d finally found Li Daoxuan.
But the killing intent coiled around Li Daoxuan hadn’t dissipated yet. Shen Qing reached for the hard silver guard at his elbow, trying to guide his hand down, only for him to shake her off with a jerk.
“Get lost,” he said, voice like ice.
Shen Qing didn’t take offense. With Wuming having scattered so many evil spirits through the forest and illusions everywhere, it was only natural that Li Daoxuan was on edge.
If she hadn’t recognized the familiar sword in his hand, she would have doubted whether this person was really him.
Light flashed in Shen Qing’s eyes. “You know evil spirits things don’t have pulses,” she said. “If you don’t believe me, feel it for yourself.”
Li Daoxuan tore the cloth from his eyes in one motion. The first thing he saw was a familiar face. The girl’s robe was torn in a few places, her cheeks smudged with dust, but even in such a sorry state her liveliness and delicate charm were impossible to hide.
So he lifted his sword and tipped her chin up with the blade, one hand closing suddenly around her neck.
Her throat under his palm felt terribly fragile. Her pulse beat faintly beneath the thin layer of skin, if he applied just a bit more pressure, the girl’s life would end in his hands.
Shen Qing looked steadily back at him, eyes shadowed and unreadable.
No one knew how long they stayed like that. At last, he loosened his grip, withdrew his sword, and the killing aura around him finally subsided a fraction.
Shen Qing, who had been watching him warily the whole time, quietly slid the dagger she’d hidden behind her back out of sight.